The French Advance Passenger Information (API) and Passenger Name Record (PNR) program generated considerable media coverage in the wake of the tragic events in France in early 2015. The plan to implement an automated passenger information processing system in France, however, dates back much further.
The program began with publication of the Anti-terrorism Law – Law No.2006-64 of 23 January 2006 on combating terrorism and laying down miscellaneous provisions on security and border controls. This law transposed European Council Directive 2004/82/EC of 29 April 2004, which requires air carriers to communicate data concerning passengers travelling to a European Union (EU) border crossing point.
The European Directive focuses only on passenger data with regard to the API mechanism. The French law extends its scope and makes provision for booking system data – PNR data – to be collected and processed in order to improve border controls and combat illegal immigration and terrorism.
Though the French legislative basis governing these aims has been in place since 2006, the Government nevertheless decided to defer the setting up of the French mechanism following the European Commission (EC) proposal to establish a PNR system, regulating the use of such data at European level.
A first draft of the European Council Directive was submitted on 17 November 2007. Since the proposal had not been adopted, it became obsolete on 1 December 2009 – the date the Treaty of Lisbon and a new EU institutional framework came into force. In 2010, the French Government decided that France should have an API and PNR data operating system, even though a European PNR Directive had not been adopted.
A TRULY INTERMINISTERIAL PROJECT
An interministerial mission formed by the Ministers for the Interior, Defence, Transport and the Budget was set up in 2011. This mission was tasked with assessing the feasibility of the project to create a Passenger Information Unit (PIU) responsible for collecting and processing passenger data on the one hand, and with preparing the corresponding invitations to tender and monitoring the public procurement process on the other. The PNR team was also to take part in the development of the national regulation and set out its reflections within a European framework characterized by the draft European PNR Directive that was still under discussion.
On 3 February 2011, the EC submitted a new Proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council on the use of PNR data for the prevention, detection, investigation and prosecution of terrorist offences and serious crime. In so doing, it took note of the procedural changes brought about by the Treaty of Lisbon and the reticence raised by this proposal, particularly with respect to data protection – the period of data retention and the processing of sensitive data in particular.
This PNR proposal fell within the framework of the ‘co-decision procedure,’ according to which the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers of the EU passed legislation as equals. In April 2012, the Justice and Home Affairs (JHA) Council, formed by representatives of EU Member States, reached political consensus on the proposal, which had been widely discussed by the European Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE).
It was subsequently rejected by the LIBE Committee in spring 2013 and was not re-examined until the renewal of the European Parliament in June 2014. Following the terrorist attacks in Paris in January and under pressure from Member States, the Parliament nevertheless signalled its wish to adopt a text before the end of 2015, though subject to a number of conditions.
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